Magick in Theory and Practice (Section 1)

that I desire her. Such a flaw is enough to bring the whole operation to naught, just as no effort of Will can make oil mix with water. I may work “naturally” by wooing, of course. But, magically, I may attack her astrally so that her aura becomes uneasy, respond- ing no longer to her lover. Unless they diagnose the cause, a quarrel may resuit, and the woman’s bewildered and hungry Body of Light may turn in its distress to that of the Magician who has mastered it. Take a third case of this class 2. I wish to recover my watch, snatched from me in a crowd. Here I hâve no direct means of control over the muscles that could bring back my watch, nor over the mind that moves these muscles. I am not even able to inform that mind of my Will, for I do not know where it is. But I know it to be a mind fund- amentally like my own, and I try to make a Magical Link with it by advertising my loss in the hope of reaching it, being careful to calm it by promising it immunity, and to appeal to its own known motive by offering a reward. I also attempt to use the opposite formula j to reach it by sending my “familiar spirits”, the police, to hunt it, and compel its obedience by threats.1 Again, a sorcerer might happen to possess an object belonging magicaily to a rich man, such as a compromising letter, which is really as much part of him as his liver; he may then master the will of that man by intimidating his mind. His power to publish the letter is as effective as if he could injure the man’s body directly. These “natural” cases may be transposed into subtler terms; for instance, one might master another man, even a stranger, by sheer concentration of will, ceremonially or otherwise wrought up to the requisite potential. But in one way or another that will must be i. The cérémonial method would be to transfer to the watch — linked naturally to me by possession and use — a thought calculated to terrify the thief, and induce him to get rid of it at once. Observing clairsentiently this effect, suggest relief and reward as the resuit of restoring it.